Literature, Religion, and Postsecular Studies Lori Branch, Series Editor The Writer of a Book, is not he a Preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and places? —Thomas Carlyle Vox audita perit, littera scripta manet. —Roman proverb a Preaching and the Rise of the American Novel Dawn Coleman The Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coleman, Dawn (Dawn Davina), 1973– Preaching and the rise of the American novel / Dawn Coleman. p. cm. — (Literature, religion, and postsecular studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1205-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8142-1205-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8142-9307-2 (cd-rom) 1. American fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Preaching—United States—His- tory. 3. Preaching in literature. I. Title. PS166.C65 2013 810.9'382—dc23 2012018926 Cover design by Mary Ann Smith Type set in Adobe Minion Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS a Acknowledgments vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 Creating Authority in the Pulpit 23 CHAPTER 2 The Slow Rise of the Novel in America 46 CHAPTER 3 The Radical Protestant Preaching of George Lippard 68 CHAPTER 4 Secularizing the Sermon in The Scarlet Letter 106 CHAPTER 5 Playing Preacher in Moby-Dick 129 CHAPTER 6 The Unsentimental Woman Preacher of Uncle Tom’s Cabin 156 CHAPTER 7 The Borrowed Robes of Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter 174 COnclUSION The Lingering Rivalry: Exposing the Sermon’s Limitations in William Dean Howells’s The Minister’s Charge 197 Notes 207 Works Cited 259 Index 284 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS a WISH first to thank those who materially supported me in the writing I of this book: the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, for a year-long fellowship in 2009–2010 that allowed me to finish my research and writing in residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while enjoying the ideal balance of freedom and collegiality; the University of Tennessee, for co-funding my year of leave at the Academy and, through the Hodges Better English Fund and Professional Development Awards, granting needed research leaves, summer funding, and travel reimbursements; and the American Antiquar- ian Society, where I held a one-month fellowship in 2006 and have happily visited many times since to avail myself of the rich collections and incom- parably helpful staff. I am also deeply grateful to those organizations and individuals that supported me during my dissertation years at Stanford, including the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Northern California Association of Phi Beta Kappa, and Thomas and Fran- ces Geballe, whose generosity funded a crucial year of writing and intellec- tual exchange at the Stanford Humanities Center. No less important were the many individuals who immeasurably improved this book through their brilliant conversation and astute feed- back. I remember with affection and appreciation Jay Fliegelman, whose radiant intellect and unstinting encouragement were a guiding light dur- ing my time at Stanford, and whose savvy counsel I have missed since his untimely passing in 2007. Those who knew Jay will recognize how much this • vii • viii Acknowledgments book owes to his insights into performance, religion, American literature, and authorship. Equally crucial to the book’s formation were Franco Moretti, who provided incisive feedback on the form and structure of my ideas and a superb education in the novel through his founding of Stanford’s Center for the Study of the Novel, and Rob Polhemus, a perceptive reader of literature and wise mentor who urged me to enrich my scholarship by reflecting on its autobiographical dimensions. I am also indebted to many other Stan- ford friends and colleagues with whom I discussed ideas and shared por- tions of the book at an early stage, including Stanford Humanities Center Director John Bender and the SHC Fellows of 2001–2002; the participants in the American Cultures Workshop, especially Gavin Jones, Joel Burges, and Patty Roylance; and members of the Nineteenth-Century Dissertation Group, including Monique Morgan, Robin Valenza, Christy McBride, Jes- sica Straley, and Crisi Benford. I am especially grateful to Crisi for countless stimulating conversations about narrative structure and for her patience in letting me talk through my readings of nineteenth-century novels. And for crucial support during those treacherous years at the start of the journey, heartfelt thanks to the fellow members of my dissertation-writing trio, Molly Schwartzburg and Hilary Edwards. Our caffeine-fueled conversations about literature and writing at the Prolific Oven are among my most cherished memories of graduate school. Since coming to the University of Tennessee in 2005, I have had the good fortune to find a wonderfully generous reader and mentor in Mary Papke; inspiring interlocutors in my fellow Americanists, especially Martin Grif- fin, Amy Elias, Tom Haddox, and Mark Hulsether; and, in John Zomchick, Chuck Maland, and Stan Garner, truly supportive and encouraging depart- ment heads who advocated for me and this book at critical junctures. I have also benefitted greatly from responses to my work from colleagues more far-flung, most of all David Hall, whom it was my privilege to have as a professor and mentor many years ago at Harvard Divinity School and who graciously read and responded to a draft of this book. For timely, use- ful comments on various portions of the manuscript I am grateful to Sara Georgini, Ezra Greenspan, Wyn Kelley, Bob Levine, Dan McKanan, Geoff Sanborn, Pat Spacks, Cindy Weinstein, and my fellow Visiting Scholars at the Academy, Dan Amsterdam, Debbie Becher, Angus Burgin, Crystal Feim- ster, Andy Jewett, Jason Petrulis, and Jamie Pietruska. Many thanks, too, to the generous audiences with whom I shared sections of the manuscript over the years, including the members of the Harvard Divinity School North American Religion Colloquium and the fellows of the American Antiquar- ian Society, as well as attentive colleagues at American Literature Association Acknowledgments ix conferences, the International Conference on Narrative, the NEXUS Inter- disciplinary Conference on Religion and Nation, the Stanford Humanities Conference on Knowledge and Belief, the Douglass-Melville conference, and the inaugural conference of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. I wish also to thank the many librarians and staff members who helped me locate and gather needed archival resources. These essential collabo- rators have included Paul Erickson, Marie Lamoureux, Jaclyn Penny, and Elizabeth Pope at the American Antiquarian Society; Frances O’Donnell at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library; Jim Green at the Library Com- pany of Philadelphia; Irene Axelrod at the Phillips Library in Salem, Mas- sachusetts; Mary Munill in the Interlibrary Loan Office at Stanford; and, at the University of Tennessee, Kathleen Bailey of InterLibrary Services and Humanities Librarian Chris Caldwell. Sincere thanks are also due to my editor, Sandy Crooms, whose long- standing faith in this book has been an inspiration, and to Eugene O’Connor and the production staff for making my role in transforming pixels into print a surprisingly painless one. I am also grateful to the press’s two anonymous readers, whose thoughtful comments improved the book immeasurably. A version of Chapter 7 originally appeared in American Literature in June 2008 and a portion of Chapter 4 as an essay in the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review in Spring 2011. I thank the publishers for permission to reprint. By convention I have saved my most personal debts for last, which seems fitting since I could never do them justice anyway. I am grateful to my mother for sharing her love of reading and debate and for her unwaver- ing confidence in me, and to my father, my first and most dedicated writ- ing coach, for providing the detailed feedback on my youthful essays that instilled a passion for well-developed ideas and trained my eyes and ears in the rhythms of readable prose. As a child I often heard from him the sage advice, “There’s no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting,” counsel that echoed in my head in after-years and buoyed my efforts in the long dis- sertation-to-book process. A warm thank you, too, to Mayumi Negishi, who wrote an essay on Othello many years ago that startled me with its lyricism and sparked a friendship that has been a steadfast delight and support. Above all, I am immensely grateful to my sons Xander and Neil for bringing me joy that seeps into all hours of the day, and to my husband Ken for providing decades of sustaining happiness and all the treks to Massachusetts, weekend work time, patient listening, and parenting help I needed to bring this book to completion. INTRODUCTION a ROWING UP in Orange County, California, in the 1980s, I attended Gthe churches of two superstar preachers. The first, in elementary and middle school, was Robert H. Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, a “walk-in, drive-in church” known around the world through the weekly tele- vision broadcast The Hour of Power. Schuller had begun the Garden Grove Community Church in the Orange Drive-in Theater in 1955, rounding up locals with the slogan, “Worship as you are . in the family car.” Twenty-five years later, the church had grown exponentially and built one of the most striking buildings in America, a giant edifice with walls and roof composed of 10,900 panes of reflective glass—what architect Philip Johnson called a “star of glass” and others said could be mistaken for a “jazzy corporate headquar- ters.”1 The new structure retained the drive-in option, allowing congregants to listen to the sermon from their cars in front of the church.